I was sure glad when the cotton picking season was over. I was given chores such as chopping wood, cleaning the barns, feeding the hogs and mules, and painting and fixing. I did all that I was told to do with very little concern or care. I spoke little, and even when I was with Buck and Corrie and their little boy, Adger, I had nothing to say.
Margie came to visit me once more, this time bringing Janey. They brought fresh peaches, walnuts, flour, cornmeal, a ham bone, and canned mackerel. In another bag were shirts and pants and sweaters and even shoes. We had enough to give away. We sat by the hearth in Buck and Corrie’s shanty cracking and eating walnuts, and talking.
Janey was a large-boned, striking girl with high cheekbones and flashing eyes. Her broad smile was bright and showed beautiful, white, even teeth. She was obviously someone who wouldn’t be held down. I eyed her with interest.
Janey didn’t say much to me, but she seemed to be genuinely concerned about me. She told us about a brother of ours named Johnny, who lived in Anderson.
I could not remember a brother named Johnny. Then she told me that I had another brother named Leroy who lived near the Beal farm. She told me Leroy owned his own little farm. It was shocking for me to be hearing things like this, and I couldn’t relate in any way to the news. Strangers who called themselves my sisters telling me of a free world outside and about brothers of mine owning farms—it was just too much for my one good black ear to bear.
“I won’t be back for a while,” Margie told me. “I’s gone have a baby.” The words meant nothing to me. People having babies all the time.
When they left, Janey said to Corrie, “Kin yoll teach him about washin and sech? He stinks terrible. ’Sides that, he’s got bugs so bad they’s crawling all over his face!”
Corrie worked from sunup until late at night, but she squeezed in time for me as well as for her child and husband. I had forgotten all that Miss Harriet and Mac had taught me about keeping clean. Corrie showed me how to wash myself like Janey had asked. She showed me how to wash my teeth with a stick and reminded me to wash my clothes.
Soon the winter would descend upon us. Even though the South Carolina winters were mostly mild, the temperature sometimes got below freezing, and there was an occasional snowfall. The cold weather didn’t last long, but without heat, shoes, or warm clothing, it was agony. I refused the clothes Janey and Margie brought because I didn’t want to have what others didn’t have. Buck and Corrie took what they needed and I gave the rest away.
With the harvesting finished, the pressure was not quite so heavy on us, and I felt myself begin to loosen up a little. I began to notice things again, like sunshine and trees. I noticed faces and stars at night, and I noticed animals. One day when I was through working in the barn, I took a walk down to the creek that ran through Sam Beal’s land. I stood on the bank watching the water for a minute or so, and then got down on my knees and stuck my head in the water. I scrubbed at my scalp and then dried off with my shirt. When I stood up, it occurred to me that I wasn’t alone. I turned around and saw a young man standing not six feet from me.
“Hi,” he said with a friendly voice.
“Hello, Thomas,” I answered coldly.
“Whatcha doin down here, Robert?”
I smiled sarcastically. “I’m taking a bath, suh, watch yoll doin here?”
“I’m takin a walk, thassall,” he snapped. “’Sides, it ain’t none of yor bi’ness.”
I shrugged and climbed back up the bank to begin the walk back to the barn. Thomas Beal ran after me.
“Robert!” he called. I stopped. “Robert, yoll doin OK?”
“Jes fine, Thomas,” I answered without looking at him. A July sun flashed across my mind, and his chubby face covered with mud; we were children and playing in the rhododendron in the yard.
“Well, it’s jes that I know it must be hard for yoll bein in the field when you been in the house all them years.”
I didn’t answer him.
“Listen here, Robert—”
I took a loud breath indicating my disinterest. “Robert, I just wanted to say—that is, listen, I gotta tell ye somethin—”
“Thomas, if you got somethin to say, say it.”
“It’s about, well, about—about that stealin’ business.”
I turned away. “I don’t care to talk about thet there subjec’, Thomas. ’Scuse me, I gotta go back to mah work.”
“Wait, Robert. I think you oughter know something! You remember Mitt and Waxy? The boys you was givin the stuff to and they was sellin it?”
“Uh-huh, I remember.”
“Well, they was sellin the stuff to—”
“To another plantation, Thomas. They had a way. I knows all about it.”
“Robert, they wasn’t sellin it to nobody on no other plantation.”
“Hunh?” I looked at him, wondering what he was getting at.
“Robert, they was sellin that stuff to—Thrasher.”
My mouth opened in spite of myself.
“I swear I’m tellin you the truth.”
“Thomas, you is plumb crazy—” I rolled my eyes and began to laugh.
“Daddy went down to the quarter when he got drunk one night and went to the Edwardses’ place, and he told Mitt and Waxy they could leave the plantation.”
I didn’t believe him. “You crazy, Thomas. They is good workers. Master Beal need strong mens. They ain’t enough strong mens on this farm!”
Thomas looked at me sadly. “There ain’t enough of nothin on this farm, Robert, and that’s the God hepp me truth.”
That night I told Buck and Corrie what had happened. “Ah declare,” Corrie said, wagging her head. “I been hearing that Massuh’s drinkin is causin him to ruination . . . mebbe it’s true.”
“Why would he turn out Mitt and Waxy?”
I had to find out for myself, and I cared so little for my life that I went down to the Edwardses’ place that night. I called inside. When Mr. Edwards came to the door, he looked surprised.
“Whatcha want here, boy?” he asked.
“I come to find out if it’s true that Massuh done turn out Mitt and Waxy for they freedom.”
“They is free, all right. But they is still workin the land share-croppin.”
Mrs. Edwards called from inside. “Come on in, Robert.”
Mrs. Edwards gave me a smile. “Robert, I’m so glad you come by. I been wantin yoll to know that we don’t hold no hard feelin’s for yoll. Come on and set yerself down here.”
Mrs. Edwards told me, “Son, bein a slave they want you low and mean and like a animal. But we ain’t no animals. We is people, an we gotta remember thet. Don’t let them make you a dog when you is a human bean.”
I nodded. A human bean.
“Yoll prayin, son?”
“I reckon not, Ma’am.”
“Yoll better not forgit Him, hear? He’s the answer to all this. He’s the only answer. If you don’t got the Lord, you gets a festerin and all tore up on the inside. Nossuh! Let’um tear us up on the outside, not the inside. Son, don’t you evah forgit the Lord!”
“Mitt and Waxy’s place ain’t no better than this one, but they call it theirs,” said Mr. Edwards.
“Do Massuh pay em?”
“He done give em tools an seed, a few chickens an a hog. They keeps half the crop and the other half goes to Massuh.”
“Lord!”
Mitt and Waxy farmed like they always had, but now instead of being called slaves, they were called sharecroppers. At least they were out from under Thrasher’s whip.
Then came the day Master Beal come looking for me. He found me standing by the door of Buck and Corrie’s shanty.
“Robert!” he shouted. “Come here, boy.”
Sweet Jesus, I comin home.
“You deaf, boy? Come ’ere!”
I hurried to his side. Might as well die quick. “Yessuh, Massuh Beal, suh.”
“Go get me some gin at the store yonder.”
“Hunh?” I was shocked. He might as well have told me to take a little jaunt to Jupiter. I couldn’t have heard right. Buck wasn’t around. Nobody was around to tell me if I heard right.
“You ain’t still dumb, are you, boy? Run up to Jube’s and get me some gin. You’s the only nigger around. Take the horse and git.”
Take the horse! What was he saying? Then I looked at the horse he was pointing at. It was Trigger, Thrasher’s horse!
Okay. They’re wanting to kill a nigger today. I’m the one. I’m gonna git killed.
“Suh, Massuh Beal, suh, yoll mean I should git on Trigger, suh?” I was so confounded I almost called Trigger “suh,” too.
“Get on that horse, Robert, and get up yonder now! Don’t you know Thrasher’s daid?”
Hunh? I stared at Master Beal like I was seeing double. He rubbed his chin with his fist. “Tha’s right, the Thrasher be daid. He got hisself stabbed in the gut while he was sleepin. Now, get me thet gin.”
Thrasher dead! As easily said as “Today is a nice day” or “Tomorrow it might rain.” Thrasher was dead.
The narrow dirt road was lined with trees, and you could see the ironwood, fire pink, and asters growing wild along the sides of the road and in the clearings.
Never in my craziest dreams had I imagined I’d be sitting on Trigger—Thrasher’s horse! And here I was, going for gin at Jube’s Market for Master Beal. If that didn’t beat all.
The horse was as demonized as his owner was, and I was glad that I got back without breaking any bones. A few days later someone poisoned that horse.
The slaves were still scared of Thrasher after he was long dead. They thought his ghost might come back and torture them. Some said they could hear Trigger going up and down the quarter at night looking to do devilment. There was talk like that.